The number of oil transports is continuously increasing on the world's seas and consequently the risk of oil spills has become higher than ever. Once an oil spill has occurred, the most important factor in the response is promptness. The faster the spill area can be isolated and the oil collected out of the water, the fewer are the problems that will be caused to the nature and people and the lower the costs of the entire rescue operation.
Currently, various oil booms which can be drawn relatively quickly from a ship out into the water are known per se. Similarly, various skimmers and equivalent oil collectors based on the brush technology as well as various aspirators are known for removing oil from the surface of water in one way or another.
However, the existing apparatuses are designed to operate on the two-step premise that first, spreading of the oil is prevented and effectively limited to a specific area by booms. Then, the oil is removed from the delimited area. The activation of the oil-removing devices normally takes up a long time as various collecting vessels are made operational or as the skimmers or equivalent collectors are made operational. The slow start of the collection operation often leads to a situation where some of the oil escapes, the weather conditions become disadvantageous, and the collection has to be postponed, only hoping that until then, the oil will stay within the area limited by the booms.